


You’re My Life (You’re All I Am)

by luninosity



Category: British Actor RPF, X-Men: First Class (2011) RPF
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fire, Happy Ending, M/M, Not Really Character Death, True Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-30
Updated: 2013-09-30
Packaged: 2017-12-28 02:05:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,403
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/986376
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/luninosity/pseuds/luninosity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For a prompt of, Michael believing James to be dead, and finding out otherwise. Joyfully.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You’re My Life (You’re All I Am)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [garrideb](https://archiveofourown.org/users/garrideb/gifts).



> Title from Foreigner’s “You’re All I Am.”

There was smoke in the air. And the taste of fire.  
  
Michael noticed it as he ran, early-morning exercise burning pleasantly in his muscles; he winced internally at his choice of words, and spared a thought for the people involved, wherever they were. Hoped they’d be okay. Surely they would; he could hear the sirens wailing. Help arriving. Rescue.  
  
He jogged in place, waiting, as fire trucks skidded past the crosswalk.  
  
Other than the sudden emergency drill come to life, it was a lovely morning. Crisp and cool and clean, or as clean as the streets of London ever got, but even the grey looked cheerful, today. He’d awakened knowing that it was the second morning on which James wouldn’t have to go off to the theatre later in the day, the morning after the first morning, the weeks they’d have together before they each had another film, another play, another job.  
  
He ran across the street when the light changed. Funny, he thought. The sirens seemed to be getting louder, the closer he got to home. The tang of ash whistled in the air.   
  
Someplace nearby? Somewhere close? He let his feet find their own rhythm on the pavement, the familiar routine, while his mind wandered.   
  
James would text him, surely, if they’d have to evacuate because of the smoke. Probably annoyed at having to be mobile on a still-new day off, hair sticking up in all directions, rumpled and adorably unawake. Probably wandering into the nearest coffeehouse and staring longingly until someone handed him a cup of cinnamon or hazelnut or chocolate mocha caffeine.  
  
Definitely close, those sirens. And there were voices, on the air. He ran around the corner, turned onto their street. Saw the building, and the commotion.   
  
He stopped. It was a slow process, as his feet got the message.  
  
He’d left James securely tucked into bed, thoroughly exhausted not from sex—not yet, as much as James had wanted to, and they’d compromised with a promise of the following night—but from the ordeal, months onstage, repeated physically demanding performances, James throwing himself so literally into the role. Bruises and shin splints and torn muscles. A fractured thumb. The exuberant joy of _knowing_ how brilliant the show’d been, night after night, and twice a day on the days with matinees. Michael’d been holding him close, not asking for anything more unless James felt up to that, not needing anything more than the closeness, all along.   
  
Two nights ago he’d been in the audience for the closing performance, and had run up on the stage to throw roses at his partner and kiss him in front of the world, and the applause had been tremendous. Celebrity was good for one thing, after all; it might make daily life a bit awkward, but at least Michael Fassbender the actor could get away with sneaking into the wings of a very prestigious London theatre to surprise the man he loved with no one objecting. James certainly hadn’t.  
  
He’d been letting James sleep as much as possible, since then. Recovery. Recuperation. All the comforting food he could manage to conjure up from the cozy kitchen, pasta and garlic bread and savory cheese sauces and fluffy waffles with Bavarian cream and real hot cocoa with spiced rum spiking the center, enough to make James laugh in delight upon first sip. And he put his arms around those shoulders when James fell asleep against him on the sofa in the middle of a documentary about sharks or a discussion of prospective film projects, and then very carefully didn’t move an inch, so that he’d be right there when James woke up again.  
  
James had been sleeping, that morning. Had murmured something that might’ve been Michael’s name, when Michael’d kissed him and said “there’s coffee in the kitchen whenever you feel like it” and gone for his daily run, precisely timed to be back just as those blue eyes would be starting to venture out of bed.  
  
James had been sleeping. In their bed. In their flat.  
  
In their building.   
  
In their building, which flickered with red and black and groaned like a dying creature and collapsed even further as Michael stood there uncomprehendingly.  
  
Despite all the flames, he was frozen. _Their_ building. Their emergency. Those fire trucks were pouring water onto their home.  
  
He gulped in air, chest heaving. Tasted ash.  
  
He made himself run forward, up to the red of the trucks, the shapes of police cars, the heat.  
  
“That—this—what happened—”  
  
One of the policemen turned around. Started to say something, probably an order to step back, then very obviously recognized him, with a physical double-take that might’ve otherwise been humorous. “You know someone here?”  
  
“I. I sort of. Live here…” He stared at the fire-licked shell. The water was pushing the flames down, extinguishing them. It left behind a building that’d been gutted. Ravaged. Dark and broken.  
  
“You do?” The man glanced back at the apocalypse, over his shoulder. “I’m sorry, then. We just couldn’t save the place. Faulty wiring, they said, I think. Old building. Just went up like flashpaper.”  
  
“I’m not—it’s not about—did everyone get out?” He was trying to see. There was a huddle, over by the ambulances. Someone crying.  
  
The man sighed. “We got everyone we found before the roof came down. After, well, nobody was going back inside. Not too many people home, though, middle of the morning. Good thing.”  
  
“No,” Michael said. “No, I—you would have seen him, you would recognize him—James—”  
  
“James?”  
  
“James McAvoy. Please.”  
  
“Oh, right, X-Men. That’s right, you two were—” The man stopped. Looked at Michael’s face. Then said, very slowly, as if unwilling to admit the words, “No, I don’t think…look, let me check in, all right?”  
  
Michael nodded. Must’ve nodded, because the man picked up his radio and started speaking softly. The knot of refugees were climbing into the ambulances, now. None of them had dark wavy hair and Scottish-pixie shortness. Not one of them tried to stop, to wait for Michael to return and find him.  
  
The world burned away, with no fanfare, into embers and dust.  
  
The expression on the police officer’s face was clear even before he ended the call. Michael took a step forward, and felt scattered bits of their home crunch beneath his feet.  
  
“I’m very sorry, I—would you like to talk to someone? We can—”  
  
“No,” Michael said. “No, he would have—he would’ve gotten out somehow, he’ll be here, he’ll come find me, he always does, he wouldn’t leave me—”  
  
“Sir, I really think you should—”  
  
“He promised.” Michael turned to look at the man. Had to convince him. Felt his hands trembling. “He said he’d always come home to me. After every film, every performance, every—everything. He said. I love him.”  
  
“I think you should come with me—”  
  
 _“I love him,”_ Michael said, and found himself on his knees, shaking, hair sticking clammily to his face from the run, afraid he might be going to be sick.  
  
After a few attempts to make him stand up, they all simply left him there. Other priorities. Containment. Actual injuries. Michael just kept staring at the apocalypse of the building, as it crumbled. James hadn’t been there, of course not, no, any minute James would walk out of the crowd laughing, voice like rich Scottish velvet: no, I’m fine, I wasn’t there after all, or better yet I woke up and got everyone out and got out myself because I’m a superhero, you know, and I’m always fine…  
  
James had been asleep. Exhausted, down to his bones.  
  
A scrap of memory blew past him, tugged by wind. Green faux-leather. A bit of book-cover, embroidered with gold. He knew that book; that was James’s expensive collector’s edition of _The Hobbit_. Not the old battered copy that got thrown into suitcases and inadvertently napped on during long plane trips, but the luxurious one that James sometimes read to him out of, while Michael curled long limbs around all the freckles to keep them warm and shut his eyes and let that glorious voice make pictures in his head, dragons and wizards and the songs of elves.  
  
The tears seared themselves into the corners of his eyes, but refused to fall. He wasn’t sure why.   
  
James would never read to him again. James would never come home to him, battered and limping but grinning like the heart of the sun, again.   
  
At least James _would_ have been asleep. Might’ve never woken up, unconscious from the smoke and soot in the air. Painless, he hoped, as far as that could’ve been possible. That was all he had left to hope for.  
  
He couldn’t think about the alternative. About James waking up alone, coughing, stumbling toward the door, the floor falling out from under him, the walls caving in…  
  
He sat heavily on the fire-scorched ground and watched the firefighters pick their way gingerly through rubble. He wanted to get up, to be there, but he didn’t want to be there. He didn’t want anyone else to find James, and he didn’t want himself to find James, because he couldn’t remember James like that, he had to remember James alive and glancing up with a crooked grin and stealing all the blankets in the night and trying to kiss him through a yawn in the pre-coffee mornings.  
  
James sneaking a Spartan warrior costume into Michael’s wardrobe on the second day of X-Men filming and then widening sapphire eyes at him, all feigned innocence, when asked about it. James practicing Shakespeare in their flat with a replica lightsaber and a triumphant pose atop the couch. James meeting his gaze from a tangle of sleek satin sheets and heated bodies, looking up at him, saying his name like that one word might mean everything in the universe.  
  
He’d whispered, “James, I love you,” and James had whispered back “I certainly hope so considering our respective positions,” and then, laughing out loud, “I love you too, you know I love you, I always have, so fucking much,” and then had ended up gasping his name, _yes_ and _more_ and _Michael_ —  
  
A few desultory mutters issued from the ruin. Fallen timbers, heaved aside. He shut his eyes.  
  
He could _still_ hear James’s voice saying his name; could hear it so clearly, as if James were right there, and that was ridiculous, and maybe it would always be that way, maybe he’d never go a day without believing he’d see sparkling-ocean eyes when he turned around, and he wondered whether he’d end up insane with grief, and the idea almost sounded rational.  
  
He looked at his hands. At his dull grey running sweats. Hated them. Heard, again, _Michael!_  
  
“Michael!”  
  
That…sounded almost real.  
  
“Michael—oh god—sorry, sorry, excuse me—I need to—” A short sturdy shape with disheveled hair pushed its way through the crowd, sprinted across the distance, tumbled to panicked knees next to him. Demanded, “Michael, I love you, are you all right!”  
  
He looked up. And then he said “Oh god oh fuck oh my god James,” and flung his arms around that shape in case it vanished, and felt the tears explode at last.  
  
“Michael,” James said, and grabbed him, holding on, shaking equally as badly. “Michael. Oh, god, when I saw you—I thought—you weren’t hearing me, you didn’t move, and I thought—”  
  
“You’re alive,” Michael kept saying, into his shoulder, his hair, the line of his neck. “I love you, you’re alive, please tell me you’re real, please tell me you’re not dead—”  
  
“I’m not dead.” James was crying too, lines leaving clean streaks along smoke-smudged freckles. “I’m not—I wasn’t there, I’d gone out, I couldn’t sleep after you left and I thought I’d go buy coconut and make you a German chocolate cake, you’ve been doing everything for me and I—”  
  
“You weren’t there…”  
  
“No, I wasn’t, I wasn’t in there, I’m here, I’m here now.” James’s hands were warm, shaken but real, touching his face, holding his shoulders. “I love you. You scared me half to death, just sitting here, and I thought you had to be hurt, and I had to practically climb over people to get through the crowd…are you all right? Look at me, Michael, I’m here, are you all right?”  
  
“I am now.” He had both arms around James, tried to pull him even closer, needing to feel him; James was already leaning forward, so they overbalanced and ended up sprawled on the ground, Michael on his back in the dirt. But his arms were still around James. Who was here, and alive. “I can’t—oh, Christ, James. I thought—”  
  
“I know.” James leaned down and kissed him, hard and fierce and flavored like salt and ash and desperate joy. “I know.”  
  
Michael whispered, one hand cradling that head, weaving through familiar dark waves, “I love you.”  
  
“I love you. Didn’t I tell you I’d always be here? You’re not losing me any time soon. I did drop the grocery bags, though. No coconut. Um. Nowhere to _bake_ the coconut.”  
  
“I don’t care,” Michael said, “I’ll buy you a hundred new ovens, and I’ll replace all your books, and I’m never letting go of you again, and I love you.”  
  
“Let’s get married,” James said, kissing him again, the two of them lying tangled up in each other on the soot-covered ground, sunlight brightening the charcoal rubble in the background. “Next week. Before filming starts on anything else, after we find another flat, and you can take me to a bookshop for our honeymoon, and I’ll bake you that cake in our new kitchen afterwards. For better, for worse, forever. Sound good?”   
  
“Perfect,” Michael said, holding him, holding onto him, “that sounds perfect, you’re always perfect, yes, _yes_ I want to marry you, I was going to ask you, I almost asked you onstage but I didn’t think you’d want that, you always say you like to keep the important things private, and I wanted you to know that you were all my important things, and the ring was in the flat, oh god, I’m so sorry.”  
  
“We can pick out rings together,” James said, “we can pick out everything new together, I love you,” and Michael kissed him one more time, and in the background the firefighters applauded.


End file.
